The sources of painting in Spain, as in other countries, are to be looked for, first in illuminated manuscripts and secondly in the remains of mural decorations. The earliest examples of the latter are to be found in the figures of saints which adorn the little church of El Cristo de la Luz in Toledo and in some scenes from the Passion on the vaulting of the chapel of St. Catherine in San Isidoro in Léon. These are attributed to the twelfth century. Later examples of the fourteenth century, exist in Seville, in San Lorenzo, San Ildefonso and the Capella de la Antigua in the Cathedral. The subject of each is the Virgin. In the cathedral, for example, she is represented against a gold diapered background, her robe also being adorned with arabesques of gold. In her right hand she holds a rose and with her left supports the Child, while two angels suspend a crown over her head. The figure of the Father Almighty, rather small in scale, appears above. The flesh is scarcely modeled, and in the case of the Virgin is very tenderly expressed; the draperies, on the other hand, suggesting in their flatness and breadth of treatment a sense of bigness. The influence is clearly Italian and seems to present a union of the feeling of Cimabue and Fra Angelico. It is with the beginning of the fifteenth century that one reaches sure ground. In 1428, during the reign of Juan II of Castile, the great Flemish painter, Jan Van Eyck, while on a mission to Portugal visited Madrid. His coming aroused in the Spaniards an interest in Flemish art, which resulted in the importation of paintings by Memlinc, Roger van der Weyden, Dierick Bouts, Mabuse and Patinir. The effect of their influence can be studied in the basement galleries of the Prado, where hang anonymous works by painters of the School of Castile during the fifteenth century. A very interesting series of scenes from the life of the Virgin (numbered 2178-2183) exhibits in the angular folds of the draperies and in the architecture a notable Gothic feeling, and have much of the freedom of composition and intensity of sentiment of Van der Weyden. On the other hand in No. 2184, _The Catholic Kings with their Families at Prayer Before the Virgin_ reproduced on page 18, the influence of Memlinc and his period of Flemish art appears. One notes the charming glimpses of landscape, seen through the windows; the almost childlike sweetness of the faces and the truly Flemish love of beautiful detail. This is exhibited in the Virgin’s crimson robe and the rosy-purple gown of the King, both of which are brocaded with designs in raised gold, and in the various accessories, particularly the church in the hand of S. Thomas Aquinas, the lily in that of S. Domingo de Guzman, and the richly decorated throne. On the back of this are curious little impish figures, that recall the weirdly whimsical inventions of Hieronymus Bosch, whose pictures, as later those of his imitator, Peeter Brueghel, were very popular in northern Spain.